Does Westmoreland Coal Company’s (NASDAQ:WLB) Latest Financial Perfomance Look Strong?

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We can further analyze Westmoreland Coal’s loss by looking at what the industry has been experiencing over the past few years. Each year, for the past five years Westmoreland Coal’s top-line has grown by 20.10% on average, signalling that the company is in a high-growth phase with expenses racing ahead revenues, leading to annual losses. Scanning growth from a sector-level, the US oil and gas industry has been growing its average earnings by double-digit 18.47% over the previous year, . This is a change from a volatile drop of -7.52% in the previous couple of years. This means that whatever uplift the industry is profiting from, Westmoreland Coal has not been able to gain as much as its average peer.

What does this mean?

While past data is useful, it doesn’t tell the whole story. With companies that are currently loss-making, it is always hard to forecast what will occur going forward, and when. The most insightful step is to examine company-specific issues Westmoreland Coal may be facing and whether management guidance has steadily been met in the past. I recommend you continue to research Westmoreland Coal to get a more holistic view of the stock by looking at:

• 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for WLB’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for WLB’s outlook.
• 2. Financial Health: Is WLB’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here.
• 3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the trailing twelve months from 30 September 2017. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.